The Burden of Leadership (of Tradition)
by OakeX
Summary: I can sum Mustardseed up in about three words: Not a King. Well, not in the traditional sense, anyway. (For ember's contest). Oneshot.


**Oh it's over. Oh praise the Lordy, bless everything, I finally finished this.**

 **The fact that this thing isn't even 3000 words long and yet still caused me so much strife is exactly why I stick with short oneshots. Besides, short oneshots are so much more dramatic than long ones.**

 **I'm sorry this is late, ember. Editing took much longer than expected. For those who don't know, by the way, this story is for ember's contest. It's a character study, and I've chosen to do Mustardseed (because he isn't used enough except for having cutesy moments with Daphne).**

 **Disclaimer: I do not own Sisters Grimm.**

* * *

To rule is to toss out all things that make you weak. That is the very nature of ruling.

You must learn to adapt, to evolve, become fluid like water, and have all scum rise to the surface so it can be belched outwards in one explosive expulsion.

Equally, you must learn to become steel. You must have a will of iron, alloyed iron, hard and unyielding and impenetrable; in a world of flesh and the weak desires of flesh a king must learn to become metal.

Such is the nature of ruling. Such is the nature of leadership.

And though it is not Mustardseed but Puck Goodfellow who is King Of Faerie, the Second Son of Oberon must learn all there is to know about what it means to be king.

 _Because he is King Behind The Scenes_. He is King Within The Shadows, pulling all the strings but letting someone else take all the credit; he gives his all for the kingdom he loves but allows his brother to be ruler nonetheless.

Because... tradition.

Because... how else can he rule without burden? How else can he rule without feeling like he cheated tradition, without feeling like he wronged the old ideas, what other option was there for him but to give up his throne?

Isn't the very nature of leadership burden enough?

...

The Goodfellow brothers had a very pressurising childhood.

After all, what did you expect, with their father being a self-absorbed man of power and their mother a tempestuous storm of a woman? Ever since they were children, the two brothers had been forced onto paths they didn't necessarily want, in order to keep their kingdom afloat.

Puck, being the eldest, was placed into a military career. Tradition dictated that the first son should be the sword-wielding right arm of the King, and so Puck was enlisted into the Faerie Army and trained in how to fight. All kinds of weapons and all manners of combat was Puck drilled in, and so for fifteen hundred years the Crown Prince evolved into a veritable god on the battlefield.

Mustardseed, however, was the younger child, and so was pushed into a diplomacy course. He would be the pen gripped in the King's left hand, a branch of Faerie concerned not with how to fight, but rather with how to avoid it. While his elder brother slashed at dummies with fake (and then real) swords, and threw men twice his size over his hip, the Second Prince was schooled in the correct ways of bowing and in the importance of tonality. He spent centuries equipping himself with all the fine arts of a gentleman— calligraphy and multilingualism and persuasive deception. He was to be the refined, cultured brother, never a hair out of place, trained in the art of smiling when indeed there is nothing to smile about.

These old Faerie traditions may seem counterproductive to a modern generation. In a world where society pushes its members to become independent contributors of their own right, what good is there in teaching one child only how to fight, and the other only how to speak?

But you must remember that these are not humans, but Everafters. And you must remember also that mortality is not a part of the Everafter condition. Fairies expect to live forever, and so it is considered more logical to bring children up in pairs. Section them off and specialise them, mature them like fine wine (or preteens). That way, when they come together, they are not disadvantaged by the infuriating condition that is all-round mediocrity, but rather can fuse strengths so as to become an indestructible force of nature.

That was the plan for the Goodfellow brothers. Two halves who would join and create a ripple effect of change throughout the dying kingdom of Faerie. Because Faerie _was_ sinking, oh yes it was, it was plummeting most surely through stormy waters. Tethered to the heavy anchor that is a line of ineffectual kings (what, you thought Oberon's rule was special in infamy?), the once proud kingdom was slowly losing its status as an influential power.

Puck and Mustardseed were seen as their only hope.

And then Puck snapped, and the Goodfellows were powerhouse no more.

...

That isn't to say he actually snapped. He didn't lose his spine, nor did he lose his mind. What broke instead was his attitude towards authority.

You see, before this, Puck was assigned a role within the royal retinue of Oberon. After he had graduated with flying colours from the National Military Academy, Puck was assigned the role of personal assistant and bodyguard to the King (Mustardseed had always pointed out how he was both PA and PB).

Oberon's tendency to shove unwanted work onto his assistants, and his vulnerability to bouts of paranoia and general suspicion did not work well with the Crown Prince.

Puck Goodfellow served under his father for five hundred years.

Thirty-seven days after his 2058th birthday, the Crown Prince finally punched the King after being ordered to sweep the dining room for listening orbs for the _seventh_ time.

...

After Puck's exile, Mustardseed was rebranded as the Heir Apparent. He began attending more meetings, taking basic courses in military warfare (so he could discuss tactics with the generals), getting even _more_ involved in the political mess that was the nobility-commoner schism, and had to employ a second PA because his workload got too heavy for one person to manage alone.

In other words, Mustardseed's life got shit on.

Gone was Mustardseed's partner. The military arm of the King had broken, and now the left hand had to balance both an unwieldy sword and a pen at the same time.

Often, he overlooked or failed to realise errors which should have been blatantly obvious to him had he slept properly the night before. One time, he hadn't realised an inaccurate translation on an already delicately poised treaty, and subsequently almost brought Faerie to the brink of war against the hot-blooded mermaid race.

In the two thousand years that followed, Mustardseed made decisions which he was not proud of:

Oberon's absurd funneling of taxpayers' money for his own private R&D had resulted in Mustardseed having to cull multiple businesses out of royal subsidies. Public schools, hospitals, massive farms, and heavily-staffed factories all had to be cut to prevent the Royal Family ushering Faerie into sovereign default. In horror, the Heir Apparent had watched as employment and education rates plummeted, as poverty and health care costs soared; watching the people who he had sworn to care for and protect starve because of him. The King had merely waved aside these figures, diverting his attention instead to a newly proposed form of explosive (practically atomic) magic.

Four-hundred-and-eighty-five years after that, Mustardseed found himself face-to-face with the most prominent rebel group to threaten the Royal Family since his grandfather's time. Led by an enigmatic figure known as Cherry Blossom, the Crimson Moon's influence was both widespread and ever-growing. To prevent civil war sparking, Mustardseed was forced to oversee unsavoury methods to acquire more information.

I am talking, of course, about torture.

...

So much torture.

The screams haunt him to this day.

And yet, through it all, Mustardseed smiled...because he was trained to smile when indeed there is nothing to smile about.

Strength comes from a united front, and though his partner had deserted him for children's tricks, and his morality had been compromised by the threat of war, Mustardseed continued to appear unruffled so as to prevent further panic from occurring.

...

Mustardseed was not proud of what he did. He had no choice, but necessity does not dull the sting of guilt that itches beneath the eyeballs. He acted as a leader must during a time of a crisis, and though his King commended him for his actions, hot regret still swept across him and made him feverish as he slept away those nights.

But such is the burden of leadership.

 _Rule for the people_ , he had been told, in the early days following Puck's exile and his own re-branding, _rule for the people you love at all costs. Never rule for yourself_.

 _Only then, will you be a great king._

...

Is it wrong to feel relief when told that your father is dead?

Well, even if it isn't, it doesn't matter, because that's what Mustardseed felt.

Oh, he was sad also, of course. When the messenger delivered the fateful news, Mustardseed could barely walk for the sick plummeting of his stomach that made his knees weak and his head spin.

But nonetheless, a certain thought managed to crawl its way into his grieving brain:

 _At least he won't be able to screw over Faerie any more_.

...

The death of Oberon brought with it complete pandemonium. Multiple issues had to be sorted out, each with their own looming deadlines, and so chaos continued to work its poison into Mustardseed's ordered life. Coronation dates had to be arranged. The search for Oberon's murderer had to be closely followed. Whispers of impending chaos permeated the minds of the more old-fashioned citizens (outdated notions about Divine Right and a break in the natural order; human traditions that had taken root in small parts of Faerie culture). Regicide brings with it its own set of complications and problems, and Mustardseed had to deal with every single one of them.

(A friend had once remarked that he had a finger in all the pies, as the human saying went, and the Prince had retorted that he'd like to pull his fingers _out_ , because the pies were still very, _very_ hot).

Months later, when it had all finished, Mustardseed had breathed a sigh of relief. _It is over_ , he thought. _My father's rule had brought with it slow-acting poison, and it has ended with him._

 _I shall make it right_.

...

Twenty years later —a mere heartbeat in the life of an immortal— Puck Goodfellow returned out of the blue to seize the throne. And so Mustardseed was denied his power, as the single-person reality he had created crumbled around his ears.

...

The return of Mustardseed's partner had occurred too late. It had been two thousand years of exile for Puck, but two thousand years of lonely, betrayed hell for his brother. While the Trickster King had spent his time flying through trees and playing pranks on pretty girls, Mustardseed had been forced to learn how to deal with his problems by himself. Haggard, fatigued, with pale skin and a drawn face, he had trudged through the political wasteland that was Faerie's Monarchy, holding his mask and his smile up with exhausting constancy.

And he had made it out _alive_.

He no longer _needed_ a united front.

He no longer _needed_ the right arm of the King, not when _he_ should have been King, not when that arm broke and only now deigned to come back.

He did not _need_ Puck, not any of him!

Why, _why_ did that boy decide _now_ to return? Mustardseed was a man now and his brother had reverted back into a child.

Oh, he was still strong, sure. His muscles were as defined as ever, his swordwork deft and fluid, he had taken dragons down with nothing but that toothpick he wore in his belt, he had heard all the stories, _he knew!_

But he was _not_ a man!

He was a child, a mere boy! Where was the maturity, where was the experience and knowledge? He smiled but with his mouth _and_ his eyes, his eyes that gleamed with naivete and fun— LOOK AT HIM!

Slouching, with an arthritic-man's posture, dressed in that hoodie that smelt as if it hadn't been cleaned for years. It's unfair, _so_ dreadfully unfair, how he could spend _two millennia_ fooling around in mud while Mustardseed Goodfellow endured the burden that was leadership. Swooping in to take the throne like that, just like that? _No_. _**No**_.

 _He had endured_ _ **too much**_ _for this._

 _He had sacrificed_ _ **too much**_ _. Gave up his leisure. Gave up his morality at one point. Nursed the pain that was regret while bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders. Mustardseed Goodfellow did not deserve this._

 _He deserved KINGSHIP._

 _He deserved TITLE._

…

But, nonetheless, tradition dictated it so.

Because... tradition was what ruled the Faerie Kingdom.

It was what pushed Puck into the military, pushed Mustardseed into diplomacy. It was the reason why their ancestors were kings, and bad ones at that. It was why Mustardseed held his tongue against Oberon, because of deference to seniority and how the power of a king exceeds that of a prince. It was why Puck could return and be king despite exile, because his physical strength and glorious feats in the battlefield were attractive to those wishing for an old-fashionably strong king.

Tradition was what _truly_ ruled Faerie. It was what made them, and it was what will break them. Tradition, to immortals especially, was potent and powerful.

For immortals do not understand the chaos that comes with death.

And so because of that, the turmoil that comes with loss is but a distant future to them that may never arrive.

But it does arrive. Oh, most surely, it does.

It barrels in like a crazed wolf, tearing all in its path to pieces, and if someone is not acquainted with the pain of loss, then they too may be torn.

So what do they do? When change happens, loss happens, and so when change happens, where do people find solace?  
Where else but in the comfortable knowledge of what they know? In a world where society must constantly adapt to fit the new situation, people whose worlds are shaken but are not used to it will not adapt, but rather retreat further into their set routines (into their _traditions_ ).

So though Mustardseed boiled with rage at the thought, and though his insides churned with the fury that comes with being cheated, he signed the form that allowed his brother to ascend to the throne.

His world had been shaken, and yet despite his foresight, even he could not escape societal pressure. He did not know what to do, so he did what tradition told him to do:

Defer to the elder. Let them have their way.

In the end, tradition dictates all. Kings, princes, farmers, housewives; all creatures that live beneath the arch of the blue sky and are warmed by rays of the sun, all are slaves to what has come before. No matter the social standing, no matter the desire to progress, the actions of people long dead will always dictate the actions of the people still living.

...The present is not now, no. Not really.

What it is is merely a repeat of what has already happened.

...

Besides, it's not like Mustardseed's relinquishment of the throne was anything unexpected. Mustardseed was by no means a weak man, but he was a man who willingly chained himself to ancient customs that restricted him from desire.

After all, what is tradition but an amalgamation of old ideas? It is nothing but a record of well-preserved thoughts that have evolved for new contexts and settings. It is the past but relocated into the present, a glossy sheen to wipe away the rust, to hide obsoletion (if indeed it _is_ obsolete), so no wonder it appeared so attractive to a forward-thinking immortal. It is what the unconscious yearned for (structure found in old), and what the conscious clamoured for (modern revolution).

It compelled Mustardseed to do what he believed he must do, and thereby injected resignation into his anger.

To put it another way, it forced him to let go of his fury.

After all, is that not the very nature of leadership? To toss out all things —all sins and skeletons— that threaten to sully the soul, and rule as a man unburdened by resentment and hate?

Isn't the very nature of leadership burden enough?

...

Eventually, Mustardseed's tossing away turned into true acceptance.

Time brought with it water, and though too much water may lead to drowning, it can also lead to the washing away of old infection.

His brother, though irresponsible and arrogant, was nonetheless a good king, a better king than his predecessor.

He _cared_ , and had people with him who made good use of his compassion, and that's the most important thing.

Because, in the end, ruling is not for the king, but for the people.

And so, Mustardseed, unlike his weak and selfish ancestors, instigated a paradigm shift in the science of ruling (because it is a science, yes, there is calculation and _so_ much theory):

Rule behind the scenes, if you must. Rule at no personal gain, if you must. As long as the people who you have sworn to love are safe and happy, as long as you provide for them as a leader should, then you are a great king.

Puck's re-appearance may have shattered Mustardseed's plans to rule. Puck's desire for the throne may have left the Heir Apparent confused as to what to do.

But tradition dictated that he let his brother be king.

And love dictated that he stayed by his brother's side.

If not for his sake, then for the sake of the people whom he loved most.

Mustardseed cared, and made good use of his compassion.

...

He may be King Behind The Scenes, but he is a great king nonetheless.

* * *

 **I wonder what the other entries are going to be like. I know the other contestants (or have at least read their work), and they're all fantastic writers, so this is all going to be very exciting. Skill with words meets psychological fleshing-out? Sounds fun.**


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